Friday, 15 April 2011

There are so many Easter products floating about this year, I thought it best I compile everything by brand in order to showcase the best and worse of what is on offer. Today Cadbury take centre stage with my reviews of their latest cake bars and some links back to some of my previous reviews that may have slipped you by if you have only started reading the site in the past year or so.

Most (if not all) of these products can be purchased in your local supermarkets, though you may also want to check out CadburyGifts online where they are doing special hampers and online deals - See HERE.

Starting with the older products that may have passed you by, you will see above the Cadbury Mini Eggs Easter egg offering this year. That was a present given to me by one of my work colleagues and has been on sale in the supermarkets since Boxing Day 2010 :D This egg package features a 120.0g of Cadbury Mini Eggs, a large sized hollow milk chocolate egg and lastly (and most awesomely) a Cadbury Mini Eggs mug, which right now is sitting on my desk filled to the brim with coffee.

In addition to all their large egg package offerings this year, Cadbury also have all usual classic offerings ...

Seemingly Burtons Foods have taken a leaf out of the the Ritter Sport approach to innovation, as a season in the calendar can't seem to pass without them introducing a few new flavours to their Cadbury Cake Bar range. This spring time the flavour variety being offered are these Cadbury Cake Bars Orange Creme, which I found on one of those infamous £1.00 introductory offers in Tesco. The last time Cadbury Cake Bars tried an orange flavour, they went a more direct route in competing with McVitie's Jaffa Cakes and tried pulling off their own Jaffa variety - See HERE. This time around the orange filling tasted more like an orange flavoured fondant, which unfortunately wasn't entirely preferable. Despite it's smooth silky mouth feel the creme was just too sugary when combined with the sweet cake and Cadbury chocolate, the orange influence felt also rather laboured and didn't have the desired fruity zingyness I wanted. I wouldn't be overly concerned if you miss out on trying these this Easter.

Fruit flavours must be the name of the game this season, as Burton's have also released a new fruit flavoured variety to the Cadbury Mini Roll range. These Cadbury Mini Rolls Lemon are the latest addition to Cadbury's extensive portfolio of Mini Rolls, and I found them on the same £1.00 Tesco deal as stated above. To cut to the chase, these Cadbury Mini Rolls Lemon were actually pretty good, and I enjoyed them immensly more than some of the other varities that have gone before. As you will have determined from the description and pictures, the lemon influence was established by the lemon jam which was intertwinned with the vanilla cream. The lemon flavours created an edgy citrus taste, whilst the coolness of jam mouth feel played off nicely against both the sponge and the cream. Again the overall taste was rather sweet, however it wasn't half as overbearing as some other varities. I wouldn't rate these as Blackcurrant and Vanilla beaters, but for £1.00 you could do worse this Easter.

Out of all the Cadbury cakes I bought this Easter these were by far the most expensive, and cost me £2.25 for the pack of five from Tesco. Compared to the Cake Bar and Mini Roll alternatives showcased above, these did look the fancier cakes - the chocolate curls and decorative Mini Eggs placed on top of the cake just made them look that little bit extra special. Whilst I was impressed by the cakes aesthetically and texturally, I was far less receptive of the taste with my main source of disappointment being driven by the buttercream element. What with the Cadbury chocolate and sponge constituents generating an already quite sweet taste, the buttercream only went to further this with it's heavy sugar emphasis. In essence it failed to deliver either a buttery or creamy development to the taste, and rather just made these cakes overbearingly sweet for my taste.